Browser Extension
Bringing procurement into scientists' existing workflow.
Led 0-1 discovery and design for ZAGENO's first browser extension, embedding procurement directly into scientists' research workflow, adopted by 5 biotechs and a global pharma company at launch.
- Role
- Lead Designer,
0-1 discovery and design - Team
- Product, Engineering, Customer
Success, and Growth - Timeline
- 3 months
- Company
- ZAGENO Inc.
The Opportunity
Scientists constantly switched between research papers, lab notebook tools like Benchling, supplier websites, and ZAGENO itself just to find and order the products they needed. Rather than improving search inside the platform, we saw a different opportunity: removing context switching altogether by bringing ZAGENO to wherever scientists already were.
The Decision That Changed Everything
We intentionally scoped down instead of up, and two decisions shaped everything else that followed:
- Built Chrome-first: roughly 80% of customers already used Chrome, with most of the remainder on Edge, which is also Chromium-based. Focusing there maximized reach while minimizing engineering effort, rather than spreading thin across every browser at once.
- Required explicit highlighting before the extension processed any content, and never stored what was selected. Customer interviews surfaced a real trust barrier: organizations worried about legal liability and exposing proprietary research, so privacy had to be visible in the interaction itself.
The goal wasn't to recreate the marketplace in the extension, but instead to bring search and discovery to the scientists workflow, without the need to navigate away from their work.
Design
Every interaction was built to feel like a natural extension of the browser itself. From there, the MVP became a focused flow: highlight a product or list of products on any webpage, right click to search on ZAGENO instantly, review the match, and add it to cart, without leaving the page or switching tabs.
Behind the Decisions
The hardest part turned out to be as much technical as strategic: extracting a real, meaningful product name from a block of highlighted scientific text. Distinguishing a valid product name from the surrounding scientific language took considerable iteration with Engineering, which pushed us to consider how search actually behaved. We also deferred full in-extension text search, since the engineering complexity and performance cost didn't justify it for an MVP built to validate a workflow hypothesis.
My role extended beyond just interaction design. I worked to make sure the product fit real customer behavior rather than internal assumptions, surfaced the privacy concern proactively rather than waiting for it to become a blocker, and partnered with Engineering continuously to iterate and improve the MVP.
Outcomes
- Adopted by 5 biotechs and a global pharmaceutical company at launch.
- Since then, additional biotechs have requested access, bringing total adoption to 10 organizations.
- The extension validated that procurement embedded in an existing workflow drives adoption, making ZAGENO a valuable tool for our users.
Reflections
I helped bring procurement into the place where scientific work already happened, reducing the need to switch between tabs. The value came from respecting users' workflow and time, ultimately benefiting our cause.
Next Steps
The next iteration explores AI-powered search, contextual product recommendations based on the research task at hand, and scientific term recognition directly inside the extension, moving scientists closer to finding the right product in even fewer steps.